Rachel’s dad Jim revealed: “I’ve seen him in action after the murder, the way he carried on, and I can’t see the authorities letting him loose on the public because he’s a dangerous, cold-blooded psychopathic killer in my estimation.

“I feel he’s capable of doing it (again). He arranged that Rose would find Rachel’s body, he got his kicks out of that and he went on like a psychopath.

“Then he brought us down to the house shortly after he got the keys back and went over the murder scene, reenacted the whole thing. It was horrific.

“I was nervous in the place but I could see his eyes dancing in his head like a mad man.

“He was getting his kicks out of watching us squirm.”

Breaking down in tears, Jim added: “Then a month to the day after he murdered Rachel he rang her mobile phone, which was in the possession of the police, and left a sick message.

“He said: ‘I’m doing exactly what you did a month ago, I’m getting the kids ready for school. It’s a nice, sunny warm morning but you’re as cold as the clay you’re in’.

“Like a month after his wife died he left a message on her mobile phone. He’s not a normal person.”

Wife-killer Joe O'Reilly

Dad-of-two O’Reilly initially fooled everyone with his denials that he had beaten his beautiful wife to death and even infamously appeared on RTE’s Late Late Show alongside her parents to appeal for information to help catch her killer.

He was eventually arrested and charged in 2006 - and caged for life a year later.

He’s still appealing to have his murder conviction overturned and Rose said the fact he has never admitted what he did or shown any remorse is enough to keep him locked up for life.

She told Pat Kenny on Newstalk radio that our sentencing laws need to be overhauled so that life means life.

She revealed: “I can’t get my head around somebody in his position being able to apply after seven years. It just doesn’t stand to reason at all.

“When you explain the effects it has had on the family. It doesn’t get any better, in fact I think it gets worse because I think as time goes on and the more things like this come up the less you’re able to handle it.

“I was always under the impression that in a case where there’s a murderer who has been convicted of the crime and is given a life sentence, I was under the impression that (they wouldn’t be eligible for parole) unless they showed remorse and admitted what they did and at no time has he ever shown any remorse or admitted.

“He’s denied it from day one and it just beggars belief that he would even be considered under those circumstances.”

Reliving the nightmare of the early days after she found her daughter’s badly beaten body, Rose admitted she was initially sucked in by O’Reilly’s master manipulation.

But then she realised the horrific truth the day after they buried tragic Rachel.

She said: “There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he had done it.

“It just didn’t add up what he said and the way he acted.”

06/03/09 Rachael O Reilly family Jim Callaly, mother Rose Callaly at the Four Courts for the Court of Criminal Appeal case in which Joe O'Reilly, of Lambay View in Beldarragh, The Naul appeals the conviction of the murder of his wife Rachel at their home in the Naul, Co Dublin in October 2004 Picture Garrett White / Collins Court

But unsuspecting Jim put O’Reilly’s odd behaviour down to shock and grief.

Breaking down in tears, he sobbed: “People even remarked to me that he wasn’t like a grieving husband.

“It was like he didn’t have a care in the world.”

Seven years on, the heartbroken parents are still haunted by their loss and the fact that Ann was also cruelly taken from them.

Revealing how tough their lives have been since, Rose said: “It’s been very, very hard in every way you could imagine.

“I just didn’t want to wake in the mornings. I would have given anything to die but that would have been too easy.”

“Ann was broken-hearted as much as her brothers were. But it took its toll.”

Not long after O’Reilly was jailed, Ann started suffering blackouts and was later diagnosed with cancer.

And she lost her two-year fight for life in December 2012.

Sobbing, Rose revealed: “I loved every cell in her body. She was an angel.

“I loved every one of my children but she was sent as an angel.

“She fought it for two and a half years, she had a horrendous death. It was a nightmare.”